Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.It's also the second rule, but this is a movie review so I have to discuss it at least a little.I'll try to make it fun for you though, okay?

This came out in 1999, based on a cult novel of the same name by author Chuck Palahniuk.I read the novel before I saw the movie. In fact I didn't really know much about the movie until I bought the book and read the blurb "now a movie starring Edward Norton & Brad Pitt."So I hired the video and gave it a watch. Both the book and the movie have good things going for them.The book, as is usually the case, delves into the reasonings behind the characters a little more.

Here's the movie poster.

Supposedly this movie was a hard sell for the studio, despite starring Brad Pitt; who was by now a big drawcard. Thelma And Louise was 8 years ago at this time, and Pitt could put bums on the sits, but even still a movie with this storyline was a bit of a risk.

Studios hate risk. And when monies involved, rightly so.With this in mind the studio only gave the production a certain amount of money. The actors agreed to star at a reduced pay, except for Pitt.It could be argued that if Brad Pitt had've taken a pay cut, then this movie may have been more successful at the box office.This is a null-point though as the movie is now a cult classic, more than making it's return in VHS and DVD sales.Hey, I have my copies. Do you? :)

The story of the film is that Edward Norton's character cannot sleep.

He's an office worker for a major car manufacturer, and he cannot sleep.

The film is about the lengths he will go to to get some rest.And maybe have a little fun in the meantime.

Word Of Advise:

Don't watch this movie, and especially don't read the novel, if you're depressed.

My God, it'll get you in the dulldrums quicker than a Smashing Pumpkins concert.

Case in point; Edward Norton's character joins a cancer support group at his local church.

Then he joins another, and another.

He soon stumbles upon Bob (Meatloaf).

As the narrative goes, "Bob had bitch-tits."

See what I mean?

Big shoutout to Meatloaf on this performance too. He's a stand-out.

After Edward Norton's character is finished hugging up to Bob's bitch-tits he soon bumps into Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter).Marla's another bleak character, but at least she has a bit of fun about it.

Marla spends some time trying to get Edward Norton's character into bed, but to no avail.He's too strung-up on his own issues.

This is where Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) steps up to swing his bat.

Judging from the look on Marla's face, he hit a home run.

In the novel, and especially in the movie, Tyler Durden represents all that is most desired in a man. Good looks, money, casual attitude, a heathly distaste for authority, and a huge amount of confidence.

I mean, Tyler's just dripping with confidence. No wonder the women love Brad Pitt so much.

So much so that I thought I would supply a Pitt montage for all my lady readers.

I hope you enjoy (please let me know how you go).

(I'm still looking out for a similar jacket, by the way).

And there you go. Hope you had fun ladies.

Now, when he wasn't busy banging Marla into next week Tyler would also conduct Fight Club.For those of you who do not know, Fight Club is a quiet little get-together for guys who want to kick the living snot out of one another.

As the quote goes; "How can you know yourself if you've never been in a fight?"

Now, Fight Club satisfies both Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's character for a while....

Until Tyler takes it up a notch with "Project Mayhem."

And that's where the fun begins.

Tyler makes and sells soap, by the way. Hence the pink soap on the movie poster.

Now, I could go into a whole long rant about the fools who have been taken in by the appeal of Fight Club, and actually practice it in underground parking lots, and warehouses, from city to city across the world.Honestly, I can see the appeal of it all.But I'm of the mind that if you're into all of this because of the movie, than you're missing the point.

Read the book, and if you still don't get it, read it again.

Okay, rant over.

I give this movie an 8 out of 10. I've just rewatched the trailer which I've linked above, and yep, based on this I believe the movie is still top notch.

So if you liked it, loved it, hated it completely and utterly, please let me know.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Say it with me, "I think I can, I think I can...."On the back of the excellent first and second film for Blade comes this 2004 movie sequel. Blade: Trinity.Personally I would've gone with Blade 3, but I wasn't involved with the production so what do I know?

Here's the movie poster. Looks pretty slick doesn't it? I like it.

This poster, along with the image below were the only promos I had seen for the movie in aLONG while before the full trailer came out

Doesn't this image of Blade (Wesley Snipes) just look cool?He's half-human, half-vampire. All of their strengths and none of their weaknesses. The inside of the jacket makes him look like Bela Lugosi's Dracula also, I reckon.

Along for the ride are two new recruits. Gun-totting swear-a-second ex-vampire Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds).

And Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel).

Hannibal King is one of my favourite comic book characters so when I read he was appearing in this film, and that Ryan Reynolds was playing the part, I was intrigued.The final product is a lot different to what I've read in the comics. Am I pissed about it? Not really. Ryan does a good job with the character his given. I thought his swearing was put in just to get the kiddies excited."Oh, he said **** and ****. Hee hee hee hee." Okay.

Abigail Whistler is the illegitimate daughter of Abraham Whistler (below).

I thought this was an interesting inclusion into the movie, especially seeing as New Line Cinemas don't hold the rights to the Val Helsing name, and as such couldn't include Dr Rachel Van Helsing (from the Tomb Of Dracula comic).

After giving two great turns in the previous movies we get a somewhat wooden performance for Whistler (Kris Kristofferson).Halfway through the film I felt like Kris had turned up for this movie just to get a pay packet, which is disappointing as I really like what he did with the character previously.My opinion of the actor hasn't diminished though. He's still top quality value, so I recommend you track down some of his other work like Fire Down Below, Payback, or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (or as I call the movie, Who The **** Is Alice?).

In the first film Blade went up against Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), and then Nomak (Luke Goss) in Blade 2.For this outing we have the original vampire, Dracula. After living such a long life his name has now been changed to Drake.In the comic books there was a decendant of Dracula called Frank Drake. Why they didn't use this character is beyond me. Again, I had no role to play in the production of this movie, so what do I know?Drake is played by Australia's own Dominic Purcell (Prison Break). I'm not sure if it's the dialogue he was given, or if he was in need of some more acting lessons, but his performance here is pretty poor.

He's a bulked up actor though, so I guess the ladies wouldn't mind seeing that on the big screen.

Meanwhile I'm busy checking out the acting talents here.

I was at a meet and greet signing for the movie, during the promotional run here in Melbourne and was lucky enough to meet Jessica Biel for about 3 seconds.She's short. Shorter than I thought she would be. She's lovely too. Just a very nice person.

Also easy on the eyes (if you're into goth chicks in office attire) is Danica Talos (Parker Posey). In this scene Danica is whispering into Blade's ear telling him she's going to give an annoying performance in the Superman Returns movie.She's actually pretty entertaining for this film, and if you're a Parker fan you should come away pleased.

But then you also have to contend with the wrester come wanna-be actor, Triple H.I won't go into a rant about why wrestler's think they can branch out to movies. I think you can tell my stance on this subject anyway.I will write though, I do like a majority of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's movies.

Haha. D-Wayne.

Now, the plot of the movie is lost on me somewhat, so this image above just gives you an example that maybe the director was going for style more than substance. But with top-notch looking talent, why wouldn't you?

There is something in the plot about Drake having the same abilities as Blade, and therefore they hate each other and want to kill one another.

Because they are so alike than they can't co-exist.

For me, being a twin, this doesn't make much sense. Sure my brother and I got into our share of fights but we never wanted to kill each other due to not being able to co-exist.

Anyway....

A highpoint in the film is the scenes invovling Hedges (Patton Oswalt). Hedges has about two or three scenes and is hilarious in them all.If you're up for a little Patton Oswalt action you can check him out in the film, Big Fan.Here's the trailer.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-i42Mrw3no

As I wrote above, the plot is somewhat secondary in this movie. About two-thirds of the way through it seems Blade is in it less, with Abigail and Hannibal King appearing more and more.

Word on the production was that Wesley Snipes wasn't too interested in the rewrites by director/writer David S Goyer, and became somewhat difficult to work with.I can understand his frustration though. This is a big character role for him so for him to become secondary is a bit of an insult.

But I can see what Goyer is also doing herealso, as this film was also meant as a spin off for Abigail and Hannibal King, into a movie which was to be titled Nightstalkers.

It didn't happen.

Now, for something fun!

I want my readers to answer this very important question; who is hotter?Jessica Biel (above)

Or Parker Posey?

Feel free to discuss your reasons for your decision.

Another reason Wesley Snipes may be upset about appearing in this film was the mass-alteration for the storyline.

According to an interview David S Goyer gives on the DVD, the original story was that vampires had taken over the world and were storing the remaining humans in mass blood-banks. Extracting as much blood from them as possible in order to feed the vampire nation.

This sounds surprisingly a lot like the Ethan Hawke movie, Daybreakers, doesn't it?

If I were New Line I'd be having a chat to my lawyers about this one....

When Jessica Biel did the promotion for this movie in Melbourne she brought along both Ryan Reynolds, and David S Goyer (the Director).I was lucky enough to meet them all and I should say, they were geniunely nice people who just happen to have the most fun jobs in the world.

This movie cops a lot of flack online, and maybe rightly so, however if there is one good thing to come out of this is that these three formed a tight friendship from doing this movie.That's got to count for something, right?

Friday, March 26, 2010

This movie had so much potential, but was really let down by some silly plot twists and stunts. I'll discuss them later.

This movie came out in 2000, the same year as Red Planet, starring Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore. It must've been the year movie studios thought we were interested in movies about Mars.

And to a certain point, we were. Well, at least my Mum and I were. We still laugh about this movie.

But I'll quickly admit, this is a much better movie than Red Planet. At least I stayed awake for this movie.

Here's the movie poster.

You can almost hear Tim Robbins saying to you, "Come for the science, stay for the fun."

I have no idea what he's saying here, or what's going through his mind. Do you? Tim plays Woody Blake, assigned to lead a team of astronauts to Mars on a rescue mission.

To get to the point of the movie were the rescue mission takes place however, takes some time. Brian DePalma (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) is the director here and takes a fair amount of time going into the particulars about how to actually get a group of astronauts to the red planet and back.

For science-nuts this is very interesting. So interesting in fact that NASA signed off on this movie, approving on all the "science speak" and visual landscapes for Mars. I remember seeing a news report about this and thought it was pretty neat.

Here's Jim O'Connell (Gary Sinise), a widower and astronaut who clearly needs a good night's sleep. Jim is still overcome with grief for the lose of his wife (Kim Delaney in a series of flashback sequences).Jim does however, get to drive a snazzy car. An Isuzu Vehicross convertible, which was a halo car produced for a very short time from 1997 to2001, selling only 4,153 units in the U.S.. It was never introduced as a convertible in the US. The jet sounds were added to give it a futuristic engine effect.

He also got to hang out with Terri Fisher (Connie Neilsen),

And Jerry O'Connell (who plays the jokster, Phil).

I couldn't find an image of Jerry O'Connell so I thought I'd show you an image of him as the fat kid from Stand By Me.That was a great movie, wasn't it.....?

But I digress. Here's the reason these guys are on a mission to Mars in the first place. Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) is the sole survivor of the first crew.The rescue team do not know this throughout the course of the movie. They have little idea as to the situation which is yet to confront them on the surface.

At about this point things get fraught with danger. Maybe because Terri decides to lose the space gear and get into something more comfortable?

I'll bet it's at this time the fellas realised just who they were working alongside, hey? I mean, who could keep their mind on their jobs when this is hovering past you?

Va-va-voom. As the only female astronaut on the crew Terri must've either been feeling very nervous, or very confident in herself.

Or maybe she didn't think too much about it when she realised what really kept the fellas interested.

Yep, a floating DNA strand, made up for M&M's. Hey, who needs a hot chick when you have floating chocolate in space?!?!

At least Tim Robbins took a little time out for some hover-dancing.

Yep, that's the way he rolls.

Oh! Oops. We're on a rescue mission here guys! Things looked a little hairy on the Mars surface, with a dust monster looking to consume the crew.

This scene did impress me, by the way. I've recently giving the film another watch and the special effects certainly do stand up to the test of time.

Alien head sculptures still look good too.

I'll give this movie a 7 out of 10. It's an entertaining movie to sit through on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It's somewhat silly (epecially the space jump from spaceship to spaceship), but this is what makes it so entertaining.

Or you can find this at your local video store. Even though it could be a comedy I'm betting it's in the drama section. Have a look-see anyway, and I hope you enjoy it.

If you have a movie you'd like me to review, or if you have any questions/comments/or queries on this or any other blog please do get in contact with me.This blog site is as much for your guys' entertainment as it is mine, so please, ask away....